cover image Moody Gets the Blues

Moody Gets the Blues

Steve Oliver. Offbyone Press, $21.95 (236pp) ISBN 978-0-9644138-7-0

This first novel about a PI who is just out of a mental hospital and driving a taxi in Spokane, Wash., in 1978 has a few interestingly mordant moments, but they don't add up to much more than a decided oddity. ""As I entered my apartment I almost knocked over Irving. He's a philodendron who resides on the table by the front window. He passed away two months ago when I was first out of the hospital and not doing too well at taking care of other living things."" So says Scott Moody early on, setting a coy tone that rapidly begins to grate. ""It's 1978, after all, and things are strange for everyone,"" he says on the same page--the first of literally dozens of times the date is mentioned. Moody, we soon learn, applied for his PI license while he was in the hospital, after having a hallucinatory chat with Humphrey Bogart. The case which keeps him busy--when he's not pushing his cab around Spokane's seedier streets or fighting off the many women who seem to find him fascinating--involves the missing husband of a temptress who was Moody's high-school flame. But the author, a Seattle-based former journalist and computer programmer, succeeds neither in creating a compelling story line nor in convincing us to believe in Moody or his setting. (Sept.)